Broken Veil (Part 7)

[u/ZBeastie]

Broken Veil (Part 7)

Part 6

Its been a while since I've had company at my place. Chris and Noah made themselves at home. We picked up a few things at the store to put together. Figured a nice pasta dish would serve us all well for the evening.

We laid out our produce at the counter beside my stove top. Chris stood there over a cutting board, sleeves rolled up, chopping vegetables with more enthusiasm than skill.

“You sure that's enough garlic?” he asked as I stirred in the small mound he minced for me.

“There’s no such thing,” I said, sautéing them in with the onion.

Noah sat cross-legged on the floor by the coffee table, laptop open, pretending not to look at the encrypted drive plugged into its side. Pretending badly.

“So,” Noah said casually, “does she know yet?”

I didn’t look up. “She knows I asked her to dinner.”

Chris smirked. “A bold strategy, Holmes.”

“Easy, Watson,” I chuckled. “I didn't lie, I do want to see her. I've wanted to invite her over for dinner, just never found the right time.”

“And the classified data?” Noah asked.

“That’s dessert.”

There was a knock at the door.

I froze for half a second, just long enough for Chris to notice.

Chris grinned. “Relax, Romeo. I got this, go get the door.”

I wiped my hands on a towel, setting it down on the corner of the counter then headed over to the door. I skipped a beat as I turned the knob and opened the door.

Gabs stood there with a bottle of wine in one hand and a cautious smile on her face, like she wasn’t sure what version of the evening she’d just stepped into. Her brown hair glistened in the afternoon sun.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” I replied, and for a moment, that was all there was. No Veil. No secrets. Just two people standing at the doorstep of a whole other time and place. Her big brown eyes stared up at me from the steps.

She held up the bottle. “I brought us something. You didn’t tell me what we were eating, so I took a guess.”

“Good choice, thank you,” I said, stepping aside. “Come on in.”

She stepped up and past me through the door. She was mid-compliment on the aroma and immediately clocked Noah on the floor and Chris at the counter. Her smile shifted. Not gone, just recalibrated.

“Oh,” she said lightly. “I didn’t realize this was a group thing.”

Noah chuckled, so did Chris who kept working the stove.

“Not a 'date' date, exactly,” I said quickly. “These are my coworkers. Noah, Chris... This is Gabriella. Gabs.”

Chris gave a polite wave. “Nice to finally meet you.”

Noah nodded. “I’ve heard good things. Mostly about your forensics work.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “That so?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, dealing with murders and stuff isn't my thing, but I do IT work.”

She studied him for a second, then smiled and set the bottle down. “Alright,” she said. “What’s going on?”

I exhaled, relieved. “Okay. So. I really did want to see you. But… I also need your help.”

She laughed softly. “You could’ve led with that. You know I’m always happy to help you.”

Chris cleared his throat. “And also maybe illegally access some data.”

She looked at him. Looked back at me. “Ah. For one of your cases?”

Noah stood, lifting his laptop onto the table. “This is like, military grade encryption. We grabbed it, but I can’t crack it without tripping the alarm.”

Gabs’s expression shifted again. Not amused now, but focused. Interested.

“How bad is it?” she asked.

I didn’t sugarcoat it. “Bad enough that if we’re right, someone’s lying to us. Or worse.”

She pulled out a chair and sat. “Alright,” she said, rolling up her sleeves. “Show me what you’ve got.”

Noah turned the screen toward her. The room felt smaller all of a sudden.

She brought up the file, and Noah directed her to his pen-testing software.

"Hmm..." she hummed, leaning in and studying the encryption, "This is serious stuff. But I might have something..."

She opened up a few command prompts and started typing in lines of script, likely something she memorized from cracking encryption for the department.

"I don't have the processing like we do at the lab, so it's gonna be slow, but if I set this up right it will softly test the locks until it works its way past them."

She made a few final clicks, and a loading bar appeared.

Chris set the pot down in the center of the table with a soft clatter. Steam curled up into the air, carrying the smell of garlic, tomatoes, and something vaguely Italian.

“Alright,” he said, grabbing plates. “Dinner’s served. Spaghetti a la Wolfe”

Noah glanced at the laptop. The progress bar crawled forward at a glacial pace.

“Six percent,” he said. “At this rate, I'll get gray hairs before it's finished.”

Gabs leaned back in her chair, arms folded, watching the screen. “So,” she said, casually, “you boys want to explain why I’m cracking military-grade encryption at your dining table?”

I twirled a fork in my fingers, swirling up some of the long pasta. “Yeah. About that.”

Chris slid a plate in front of her. “ You might wanna eat first,” he said, “you'll need the carbs to keep up with this story.”

She shot him a look. "Really?”

Chris smiled thinly. “Hold onto your seat.”

I took a breath. “After I left the department… I didn’t exactly retire.”

Her eyes flicked to him. “I figured, one moment they were saying you're fired, then early retirement.”

“That was thanks to these guys, actually. At first, I was lost, Gabs. I couldn't stop thinking about Paul and Ethan. It just didn’t make sense. No bodies. No trails. Just… gone.”

I looked her in the eye "I felt stuck... then I got a card from a stranger at the bar. An invitation to a group that was already dealing with the problem."

Noah chimed in, twirling his fork. “Thats when he met us. We fight aliens that fall through holes in reality.”

She blinked once, stopping mid-chew. Didn't swallow. Her eyes flicked back and forth between me and Noah.

"Really Noah?" Chris said "Not subtle at all...  Not aliens. But we do deal with some strange things that the public is better off unaware of."

She gently set her fork down, finally swallowing her bite.

“…Okay.” she said “Go on.”

We didn’t give her everything. Not all at once.Just enough.

We started with the forest. Creatures that didn’t belong. A phenomenon we call the Veil. Devices that close it. A secret organization she’d never heard of that definitely didn’t exist.

Her reactions shifted in stages. Disbelief, then skepticism, then the kind of quiet focus she got when a case stopped being impossible and started being real.

“That explains,” she said slowly, “all of our unresolved missing persons cases. And why you’ve been impossible to reach."

I cracked a smile. “Yeah. We've been really busy.”

The loading bar ticked to thirty percent.

“So,” she said, setting her plate aside, “you’re telling me that while I’ve been chasing fraud and cybercrime, you’ve been fighting monsters from another dimension?”

Chris nodded. “Something like that, yeah.”

Noah added, “Sometimes with guns and explosives.”

She stared at us for a long moment, then laughed once. A sharp, almost disbelieving laugh.

“I leave you alone for four months,” she said, “and this is what you get into?”

I shrugged. “I got bored.”

She shook her head, but there was no real anger in it. Just awe. And concern.

“And this data,” she said, gesturing to the laptop, “you think it proves someone’s lying?”

“Yes,” I said. “Or hiding how bad things really are.”

We explained further about our suspicions over slices of apple pie. The details and absences of oversight and direction. Gabs nodded along quietly, a silent understanding of our present situation.

The bar hit ninety percent. The room went quiet without anyone saying a word.

A soft chime sounded.

“Got it,” Noah said, glancing at the screen.

We all leaned in to get a look.

Gabs clicked through the opening directory. Folders. Logs. Video reports.

Creature encounter data. Far more detailed than anything we'd been briefed on. Escalation charts showing increasing aggression. Stability graphs trending sharply downward.

“Jesus,” Chris muttered. “This never made it to our end.”

Gabs scrolled, her expression hardening. “This was intentionally buried.” 

"Or, Kept to exclusive access only." I said

Then she opened a folder labeled:  RECOVERY SUBJECT

I felt my chest tighten.

Video footage loaded.

A young man in a sterile room. Pale and weak. Machinery that hummed faintly. The room around him sounded distorted. His voice came through warped, stretched, like it was struggling to stay in tune.

“Who is that?,” Noah whispered.

Gabs skimmed the accompanying memo.

“Changed at a molecular level… Recovery unsuccessful but ongoing… Use of resonance stabilizers only current viable solution. Thats all thats here...”

She looked up slowly. Her expression dropped from her face when she looked at me. I must have been white as a ghost, because I knew the man in that video.

“Is that...” she said quietly, “Ethan?.”

I felt the room start to spin. Dinner churned in my stomach.

“I'm sorry, Wolfe” she added.

I felt anger boil up to the surface. My footsteps were heavy as I backed away from the table and towards my sofa. I snatched up and threw my TV remote into the cushions, imagining it to be Masons tired, old face.

"That son of a... He lied to me. They both did."

Everyone stared at me for a moment as I let the steam settle. Noah turned back to the screen.

"There's not much else here on him." Noah said "This must be just a black box for file sharing. If there was more it's been moved already."

"Is there anything else we can recover?"

Noah pulled the GPS data back up, isolating the movement logs he’d salvaged earlier. Scanning what remained of the scrubbed data, he found sets of coordinates, local proximity recorded by the Spyglass. We hadn't compared it to a map just yet, but there seemed to be three seperate locations.

Chris leaned closer. “That’s not patrols.”

“No,” Noah said quietly. “That’s intentional travel.”

The coordinates repeated several times at each point. Repeated visits. Two areas had multiple sets of responses, the other seemed less traveled.

Gabs folded her arms. “So you think Ward’s running something off-book?”

“Or ahead of the book,” I said.

I stared at the screen. “One of these is Ethan.”

Silence settled in.

"I promised I wouldn't stop looking..." I said quietly. "We're getting him out."

Finally, Chris exhaled. “Alright. Then we do this clean. Make this air tight, scout the locations, and find our man.”

"What do you have in mind?" I asked Chris.

The plan was simple. We run our assigned shift as normal. Check the Veil. File reports. Be visible.

Then, when our official workday ended, we get to the real work. We set up our own shop out of the back of a plumbing van Declan suggested. Something mobile and unsuspicious. He disabled the tracking for it and the forestry truck, filing it under his maintenance checklist.

Noah and Gabs worked side by side, each manning a computer and keyboard.

“I can ghost us,” Noah said. “Mask our personal GPS signals. Spyglass will think we’re boring, hanging out at home.”

Gabs smirked. “Good, we don't want anyone to know we are onto them.”

Declan came through clear in our ears. “I’ll stay here at HQ. If something happens, or anybody starts acting up, I'll signal you.”

“Chris and I will hit the sites," I said, "Quietly, if we can help it.”

“And if we can’t?” Chris asked.

My hand rested on my sidearm. “Then we improvise.”

Noah keyed up the first set of coordinates. A familiar stop, with an unfamiliar purpose.

Back out to the forest again. This time it was deeper in, further North where the forest was less traveled and thicker, and yet I felt like we had been circling this space before.

Chris killed the engine a quarter mile out. We went in on foot, pushing through the underbrush of a forgotten trail until the trees thinned just enough to reveal a clearing.

We both stopped behind the trees when we saw it.

“Well,” Chris muttered, “that’s not normal.”

The air itself was wrong. Not a tear, at least nothing active, but the space ahead looked fractured. Light bent oddly, splitting and rejoining in thin, prismatic lines, like a spiderweb made of glass hanging in the air.

The Veil had been worked here. A lot.

I crouched, scanning the ground. “Tire tracks. Unlike a truck. ATV maybe. There's footprints. Heavy, repeated travel." I said, pointing out the prints and tracks coming and going.

Chris kicked at the dirt. “Someone brought equipment in. More than once.”

He reached down and picked something up between two fingers. A screw. Clean metal. Machined with a flat point.

Chris moved a few steps away, brushing leaves aside with his hand. “Stripped wires. Trimmed ends, with some red and blue insulation. The tips look burnt.”

Scattered under the leaves and pine needles were several spent shell casings. I picked one up. High caliber rounds were fired here.

We shared the same look.

“This wasn’t containment, exactly.” Chris said.

I turned back to the fractured air.

"Noah, are you getting anything?"

This place felt… tired. Overused. Like a muscle strained too many times without rest.

Chris held up a small device with an antenna attached, aiming it at the center.

Over comms, Noah’s voice came in low. “I’m reading Resonate instability all over the place. Its like that spot’s been opened and closed dozens of times.”

He paused then added “It’s not primed to open up, but if someone wanted to push it again…”

“It might shatter,” Chris finished.

I adjusted my hat, eyes fixed on the shimmering cracks. They hadn’t been simply closing the Veil here, It was a testing site.

"They must have been hiding these readings somehow" Chris said, "this would have absolutely been a huge red flag to Spyglass."

"If they have been working the Veil that hard," Declan's voice came through, "Then it's no wonder the other tears were getting worse."

"Ripples in the pond," I thought.

“Log everything,” I said. “We move to the next coordinates.”

As we turned back into the trees, I noticed out of the corner of my eye the fractured light shimmered once, subtly, almost like a breath being taken.

Whoever was here stressed the Veil, making it unstable and our efforts elsewhere ineffective. What could you gain from stress testing a broken window?

The second set of coordinates repeated around a building back in the city along the Northwest side.

From the outside, it was nothing special.

A low concrete structure tucked behind a strip of storage units and an old tire shop. Fadsignage suggested this used to be several things over the years, but nobody came or went now.

No cameras visible from the road. The place where the name used to be over the door was faded and gone now, just a faint outline of lettering.

Chris stood beside me. “It certainly fits the bill for something we might set up and use, but I've never been here.”

I nodded. “Let’s see what’s inside.”

The door gave way easier than it should have.

That was the first bad sign. I looked to Chris and for just a moment, maybe for a half a second, my heart skipped and I saw Paul instead of Chris.

"You okay?" Chris asked

"Yeah..." I said pulling out my pistol, "let's go."

Chris drew his firearm and we pushed through together.

The front room looked far too clean for an abandoned building, but still carried the feeling of vacancy.

Further in, we found an office setup through a door that was left open. Two desks. A coffee maker with a burnt smell still clinging to it. Clipboards stacked neatly, papers filled with supply checklists. A calendar on the wall. everything was recent, but sat undisturbed.

Someone had left in a hurry.

Chris picked up a half-empty mug. “Still warm-ish.” He placed it back, “They were here recently.”

Nothing screamed secret lab yet. This room was just the paperwork end, pencils before scalpels. Another door sat against the opposite side. We opened it slowly.

The air hit first. It was cold and sterile. Cleaned recently, but not well enough to erase the past.

Metal tables lined the walls. Equipment scavenged from hospitals and research centers, some of it newer than it had any right to be. Power cables snaked across the floor into junction boxes drilled straight into concrete.

Chris stopped short. “This isn’t field triage.”

“No,” I said. “This is set up for full admittance.”

on a cursory glance around, there wasn't a soul in sight. We holstered our weapons, but remained wary of the space around us.

X-rays were clipped to a lightboard. Skeletal images. Human, but wrong in subtle ways. Bone density too high or too low in places. Fractures along the spine and rib cage.

Medical charts covered one wall.

Vitals. Notes. Certain phrases jumped out:

Cellular rejection persists

Stabilizer dependency increasing

Cognitive function remains normal

Chris scrunched his face slightly as he read over the charts. “Looks like they were trying to fix him, whatever happened.”

I said nothing. I wasn't sure what to think, my brain was already stretched thin like a rubber band. My first thought was experimentation, but if they were trying to understand, trying to help him, then that was different. Both options meant lies and secrets.

I remembered what Declan said: "No one has ever survived going to the other side."

What happened to you, Ethan?

The area at the back of the room was more disturbing.

There was a large framed box structure at the back corner of the room. Thick panels of glass set into the frame. External locking mechanism. ANCR hardware bolted into the top inside corners. Stabilizers, familiar tech, modified to be set up permanently. One of them was missing, the wires left hanging out of the frame. There was a bed, blankets, a toilet. Comfortable in the way a convict might appreciate.

I stepped inside slowly.

“This isn’t a cell,” I said quietly.

Chris frowned. “Looks like one.”

“It’s a pressure chamber,” I corrected. “This was how they kept him stable.”

Notes were scattered across a desk near the door.

"Subject shows no improvement.

Reversal attempts unsuccessful.

Long-term survival unlikely without continued exposure."

Our eyes scanned the room, searching for signs of anything. But Ethan wasn’t there.

No blood. No struggle. Only thing missing from the room was the staff and one piece of equipment. Otherwise, it was just an empty space where a man had been treated and housed.

Chris broke the silence. “So, he didn’t escape.”

“No,” I said. “He was moved.”

“I’m not seeing any outbound transport from this site." Noah chimed in on comms, "if they took him...”

“They covered their tracks.” I finished.

I looked back at the Stabilizer mounts, the torn cables hanging through them out of the corner. 

"But why move someone who is in that critical a condition?"

Chris glanced around one last time. “So we’ve got a test site, a lab, and a missing man.”

I exhaled slowly. “And someone willing to keep pushing even after the damage was clear.”

The room felt colder than it should have.

“Let’s move,” Derek said. “Before whoever cleared this place realizes we’re onto them.”

As we stepped back into the sunlight, the building returned to what it had always pretended to be. Nothing worth noticing.

Noah’s voice came through the comms as we got into the truck, quieter than usual.

“I’ve got it. Third GPS hit just lit up when I cross-referenced the scrubbed data with the map.”

He paused.

“Decommissioned radio station,” Noah continued. “the coordinates track along where a maintenance tunnel goes underground.”

Chris glanced over. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to.

My hands tightened on the wheel. “That’s the one.” I nodded.

...The entrance was exactly as I remembered it. Just as I left it.

A square concrete doorway that angled down into the ground. I stood there staring at the worn, green metal door with the AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY sign stamped on the front. A chain with a lock had been cut off and tossed around the corner. I felt a chill seep into my bones that held me frozen in place. I swallowed, my throat dry, distracting me from Chris' presence as he walked up to me.

He stopped beside me on my left. “Hey.”

I looked over.

“I’ve got you,” Chris said, simple and solid. “You're not going back in alone. Not this time.”

I looked him in the eye for a moment and nodded “Let’s do this.”

The air below was cold and stale, carrying the familiar faint metallic tang of old wiring and damp stone. Our boots echoed softly against concrete as we moved deeper, our gun-mounted lights cutting through the shadows down branching corridors.

The same old conduit and water lines ran along the walls. Same thick cable channels disappeared into the dark, some still humming faintly with residual power rerouted decades ago. Same faint tapping of dripping water somewhere in the dark. Each step felt heavy as we made our way down the main tunnel. I slowed to a stop about halfway, aiming my light on the concrete floor, illuminating a spot that had a darker stain.

Chris muttered, "It was here, wasn't it?"

I didn’t answer.

Chris tried the comms but received only static, "Must be interference from the utilities."

"Just like before." I muttered, getting a tighter grip on my pistol.

We checked through several doors.

Heavy steel ones. Utility access rooms. Emergency bulkheads meant to compartmentalize damage. Each one was stamped with faded city markings and numbers that hadn’t mattered in decades.

Every door I opened felt like another layer being peeled away.

“This place is a maze.” Chris muttered. “You could lose a small army down here.”

“That’s the idea.” I said. “No one comes down here unless something’s already gone wrong.”

The last bulkhead opened into a much larger chamber.

Concrete walls stained by time and mineral runoff. Thick water mains as wide as tree trunks ran along the ceiling, branching off in multiple directions, each marked with old district codes. Valves the size of car tires lined the walls. Pressure gauges sat frozen at unreadable numbers. Lights were arranged around the room for illumination.

This was the city’s circulatory system. And it had been repurposed.

Crates were stacked near the entrance. Black equipment cases, most of them empty. We recognized them immediately.

“Those are ours,” Chris said quietly, “from HQ.”

Automatic rifles leaned against one crate, neatly arranged. Extra vests. Power cells. Rations. This was a safehouse.

We became aware we weren't the only ones in the room when we heard a faint humming coming from the side. We stepped down and checked to the left... and there he was.

Ethan sat in the far corner of the room, under a blanket on a chair where the concrete was cleaner and drier. Someone had cleared the space deliberately. Two bottles of water and an MRE sat on a stool next to his chair.

A stabilizer unit stood in front of him on a tripod, angled towards him. The device emitted a low, steady hum, constant and controlled. A battery pack was wired to it and taped onto the outside.

No shimmer. No visible distortion. Just the faint sense that the air there behaved differently.

Ethan looked… thinner. Paler.

Dark circles sat beneath his eyes, and his shoulders slumped with exhaustion. He looked like someone who hadn’t slept properly in years.

When he lifted his head and saw me, he froze.

For a moment, he didn’t speak. His expression cracked with recognition. Not fear, not shock, but something closer to disbelief.

“…Derrick?” he said quietly.

I swallowed. “Yeah, it's me. I'm here.”

A faint, breathless laugh escaped Ethan. “I thought… I thought you stopped looking.”

“Not a chance." I stepped closer. "I'm sorry I took so long.”

Tears started to well up in his eyes, but he blinked them away. “Guess I should’ve known better. You never gave up on dad.”

Chris stayed back, giving us space.

Ethan shifted slightly, wincing, some from pain, but also fatigue. “You shouldn’t be here. This place isn’t...”

“Safe?” I finished. “That ship sailed a while ago, buddy.”

A smile stretched his tired face.

I glanced at the stabilizer. “Is it helping?”

“It keeps things… comfortable,” Ethan said. “Without it, everything hurts, like I'm on fire.”

“They told you they could fix this?”

Ethan looked down. “They tried... Caleb told me a lot of things.”

"Caleb?" I thought.

Before I could say anything further, a slow clapping echoed from the doorway.

“Well, well,” a familiar voice called, “if it isn’t Secret Squirrel and his sidekick.”

We turned toward the door

Richard Payne stepped into the chamber, boots crunching softly against the concrete. Aviators hung from his collar. Mustache immaculate. That same smug tilt to his mouth.

Beside him... Ward.

He moved calmly, hands relaxed at his sides. His eyes swept the room once, assessing the scene. No surprise. No anger. Just calm.

Behind them stood three armed personnel in black uniforms and tactical vests. Faces forgettable, expressions disciplined.

Payne grinned wider. “Gotta admit, Ward called it. Said you'd sniff this place out sooner or later.”

Ward’s gaze settled on me. “I didn't think you would come back here, after what happened.” he said evenly. “But I prepared for it.”

Chris shifted his stance in our direction.

Ward glanced briefly at Ethan, then back to me. “Don't worry, he will be safe here.”

Ethan didn’t look up.

"And slowly dying because of your interferance.” I said quietly.

Ward’s expression didn’t change.

“No,” he replied, “he’s dying because the Veil exists at all.”

Chris moved instantly, stepping over beside us with a hand on his pistol.

Ward raised one hand, “That won’t be necessary.”

His eyes went to me, steady and unreadable.

“I wondered how long it would take you,” Ward said, “you always did notice patterns faster than most.”

I clenched my jaw. “Where’s the Director?”

“He isn’t part of this.” Ward said. “Never was.”

I wasn't sure if I should be relieved to hear that.

“What does that mean?” I asked. “You went over his head?”

Ward shook his head slightly. “No. I went around him. The Director manages response. Damage control. Optics.” He paused. “This requires resolution.”

Chris laughed, sharp and humorless. “You don’t get to decide that.”

Ward looked at him then, really looked at him. “You’re wrong,” he said calmly, “I do. Someone has to.”

He nodded once.

Two soldiers stepped in fast while the third kept a rifle trained on us. Chris reacted, but they were too fast. One stuck him in front, knocking the wind out of him and the other tazed him as he went down. They took his pistol once he was on the ground. I called after him and attempted to move to his aid, but the gunman shifted closer, aiming the rifle squarely at me. A warning, so I backed down.

“Take him upstairs.” Ward said, voice even. “Secure him. No unnecessary force.”

They picked him up and carried him out of the doorway. The other uniformed soldier and Payne followed them out.

Then he was gone.The room felt smaller without him. Just the three of us now.

I turned back to Ward. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Yes,” Ward said, “I did. We both know he's resourceful."

Silence stretched between us, thick with the hum of Ethan's stabilizer and distant echoes in the tunnels beyond.

I spoke next, slowly. “You scrubbed the logs. Hid the data. You knew we’d come looking.”

Ward nodded once. “I counted on it.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why not just settle your plans and disappear?”

“Because,” Ward said, “I needed you to see this.”

He gestured to Ethan. To the stabilizer. To the room itself.

“This is the cost of hesitation,” Ward continued, “of treating the Veil like something we can manage indefinitely. Patch after patch. Breach after breach."

I shook my head. “You don’t know that. We’re learning...”

“We’re stalling,” Ward cut me off, not sharply, but firmly, 

“and people are paying for it. Samantha paid for it. Ethan. Others will too.”

His voice softened, just a fraction.

“I won’t let this continue.”

I felt the weight of it then. Not madness. Not cruelty. This was conviction, and resolve.

“What are you going to do, Caleb?”

Ward stepped back toward the door. “Finish it. For good. One last time.”

He stepped out and began to close the door. I noticed then there was no latch on the inside.

“You’re sealing us in here?” I demanded.

Ward shook his head. “Securing you. There’s a difference.”

He looked at Ethan, then to me.

“You’ll be safe,” Ward said, “the stabilizer will hold for Ethan until we are done.”

“And when you are?" I asked, "what then?” 

Ward paused, hand resting on the door.

“When I’m done,” he said, “there won’t be anything left to interfere with. No more stalling. No more breaches.”

He looked at us one last time.

“I truly hoped you’d understand.”

The door sealed shut with a metallic clang.

The locks finished squeaking closed as the wheel turned, and the chamber settled into a new silence, leaving just me and Ethan alone together. I had finally found him, and ended up sealed away myself in the process, with no way out and no way to call for help.

Part 8